Business

Despite the volatility in many sectors, there's still hope for job seekers across the spectrum of education and skills. NEWSWEEK consulted the Bureau of Labor Statistics and career counselors to predict the most stable professions for years to come.

Hedge funds are an integral part of the global financial order, but they operate with little regulation. Really, it’s anything goes. Sebastian Mallaby makes a case for them by way of a glamorized history.

Just once, it would be nice if a president would level with Americans on energy. Barack Obama isn't that president. His speech the other night was about political damage control: his own. It was full of misinformation and mythology. Obama held out a gleaming vision of an America that would convert to the "clean" energy of, presumably, wind, solar, and biomass. It isn't going to happen for many, many decades, if ever.

Representatives of several oil companies will stand in front of a federal judge today and ask for a moratorium on deepwater drilling to be lifted. The government argues that more work needs to be done to assess the issues associated with drilling at depth. BP CEO Tony Hayward argues ... well, nothing really. He was busy racing his yacht over the weekend.

Ever since oil began gushing from the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, BP has become as British as Wimbledon, as foreign as football played with a round ball. As a result, it's possible the company will suffer harsher treatment at the hands of consumers and lawmakers.

After years of mounting customer outrage over its clogged network, AT&T has finally scrapped its unlimited-data plan and raised the price on heavy data users. It’s a wonder it took so long. Since the iPhone debuted exclusively on AT&T in June 2007, Apple stock has risen 110 percent, while AT&T is down 38 percent. The $30-a-month unlimited plan was designed to attract customers, and with 50 million iPhones sold, it did. But AT&T’s network was crippled as a few users hogged bandwidth: 3 percent of AT&T’s smart-phone customers use 40 percent of its data. AT&T now offers a two-tiered system: 200 megabytes for $15 a month; two gigs for $25. Use more than that, and you’ll pay extra. Network strain is likely to ease as a result, and analysts believe others will follow AT&T and that the switch will usher in a new era of (more profitable) metered data-pricing.

"Look out for the Brazilians and the Indians," the CEO of a large Fortune 500 consumer products company told me at a lunch a few months ago. And he wasn't talking about the World Cup. He was responding to a question about where the next wave of foreign investors in U.S. assets will come from. A few years ago, dealmakers were abuzz—and many analysts were fearful—about the prospect of sovereign wealth funds from the Persian Gulf and China shifting their strategies from buying U.S. government bonds to purchasing U.S. companies. Since many of those bubble-era deals exploded, the sovereign wealth funds have become much less aggressive about entering the U.S. market.

The federal government has to step in with aid for the states. The Obama administration has asked for about $50 billion for 2011, but experts say they'd really need about twice that. The trick, however, is that you don't want to reward profligate spending under the cover of mitigating an economic disaster. And helping states solely on the size of their budget holes would do exactly that.

The SEC filing for Tesla Motors, Inc.’s public offering reads like a laundry list of how and why the company will never make money. Tesla announced Tuesday that it would publicly sell 10 million shares for $14 to $16 a piece on June 29. The “risk factors” section alone clocks in at 42 pages.

President Obama's Oval Office speech about the Gulf oil spill was almost enough to make you miss President George W. Bush. Maybe not the actual presidency of George W. Bush, but at least the platonic ideal of the presidency of George W. Bush—the M.B.A. president, the chief executive as CEO.

Even before the financial crisis, the spending power of women was increasing in both rich and poor countries. The downturn has accelerated the trend, particularly in the United States. American men lost more jobs (they worked in the hardest-hit areas like financial services and manufacturing), whereas women started more companies.

It's psychology, stupid. Not since World War II has an economic recovery been so hobbled by poor confidence. Every recession leaves a legacy of anxiety and uncertainty. But the present residue is exceptional, because the recession was savage and--more important--its origins (hous­ing bubble, financial crisis) were unfamiliar.

Politicians worldwide are buying votes by cutting spending. Slow-growing, highly indebted countries in Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Portugal) see austerity as a way to avoid the fate of Greece. Others are reacting to fears of stimulus-induced inflation.

Online shoe retailer Zappos made a name for itself with topnotch customer service. It paid off: Amazon bought it for $1.2 billion last fall. In his new book, Delivering Happiness, CEO Tony Hsieh talks about Zappos’s unique business approach and giving customers that “wow” feeling.

Four thousand miles of ocean won’t insulate the U.K. from BP’s catastrophic mess in the Gulf of Mexico. The woes of Britain’s second-largest company are sure to spill into the country’s already faltering economy. Last week Business Secretary Vince Cable warned of “major, indirect effects on the British economy” from the spill, with investors among the principal victims.

As Western economies begin to recover, extravagant, eye-popping architecture is giving way to a subtler new aesthetic. In the U.S. and Europe, architectural values are shifting from can-you-top-this designs toward more efficient, functional building.

With the release of his new book, investigative journalist Tom Bower gives us a glimpse of what the oil spill debacle must look like from the boardroom. NEWSWEEK chatted with Bower about how the industry got itself into this mess, and where it might be headed next.

Over the past 28 years, by making lingerie affordable, accessible, and acceptable, Victoria's Secret has created a middle ground in intimate apparel. Meet the man who brought sexy undergarments into the mainstream.

Jérôme Kerviel, the rogue trader who lost billions for the French bank Société Générale, begins his trial today. The financial calamities we've witnessed since his crime make his $5.9 billion loss seem almost quaint.

Despite being in charge as BP has failed—and failed, and failed again—to stop the flow of crude oil into the Gulf and some poor turns of phrase ("I want my life back") the BP leader may have the most secure corporate seat in Great Britain.

The federal panel investigating the financial crisis subpoenaed Goldman Sachs on Monday for information on the company's role in contributing to the recession, with commission chairman Phil Angelides citing Goldman's "deliberate effort to run out the clock" as a factor in the subpoena.

Cost-cutting by BP, careless rig operators, and lax regulators have all been fingered as plausible culprits in the blowout. President Obama has appointed a commission to investigate the causes. There will be extensive analyses. But the stark contrast between the disaster's magnitude and the previous safety record points to another perverse possibility.

For the first time since 1985, China has overtaken Japan as America’s most important Asian partner, according to a new survey from the Japanese Foreign Ministry and Gallup that polled 200 U.S. opinion leaders. The results reflect China’s meteoric rise in economic and diplomatic power and influence:

The ongoing debacle in the Gulf of Mexico is a sign of many things. We’ve entered an age in North America when the production of energy, especially from fossil fuels, comes with ever-more-expensive environmental tradeoffs.

Investors hate risk. So when one country sinks another’s ship, killing 46 sailors, and threatens “all-out war,” it sounds like a good time to sell, right? Wrong. Political crises sometimes can be a great time to buy. When South Korea released a report on May 19 proving that the North was behind a torpedo attack two months earlier, tensions heightened and stock prices tumbled. But steely-nerved investors swooped in, and those who bought a broad index of South Korean stocks at the low made a 12 percent return in about a week—and it’s still trading roughly 13 percent off this year’s high, making for plenty of upside opportunity.